


Candy/Crush

by Aesoleucian



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dai-hachi-han | Team 8 (Naruto)-centric, Fluff, Gen, sleepover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 08:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8198272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Team 8 has a sleepover, gets a little high on sugar, and talks about their collective crush. You know exactly who I mean.





	

Hinata has told her father that her team is away on a training trip. This is almost true, because they will be spending all day every day training for the next week. But, at Kiba’s insistence, they will all be sleeping at the Inuzuka compound. “It’s team bonding!” he says.

His sister mutters from across the room, “It’s because he never had anyone to sleep over with ‘til he got a team.”

“Shut it, Hana!” Kiba snarls. “I’ll bite you.” But he doesn’t deny it, and Hinata can see how it would be true. Kiba is the most physical person she’s ever met, the kind of boy who will wither like a plant kept in the dark if he isn’t able to touch and be touched. She likes it: the casual arm slung over her shoulder, the willingness to carry her on his back when she’s exhausted, how Akamaru is almost always available to sit on her lap and lick her face. Her father probably wouldn’t approve—nothing like that would ever happen in the Hyuuga compound—but he already doesn’t approve of her being weak and a shinobi. His opinion doesn’t matter unless he’s shouting at her.

“C’mon,” says Kiba. “My room’s big enough for all of us.”

“You better come right back out and help make dinner, little bro,” Hana calls. “Mom’ll be pissed if you goof off with your friends instead of pulling your weight.”

“We’d be delighted to help, too, Inuzuka-sensei,” says Hinata.

“Why? Because as guests we should be as pleasant and helpful as possible. It’s only polite.”

“Your friends are way better than you,” Hinata hears Hana say just before Kiba slams the door shut.

“Sisters,” mutters Kiba, but he doesn’t look really angry. “Anyway, here’s my room. Dump your stuff and we’ll go back out. But you don’t need to hurry or anything.”

Kiba’s room is clean, mostly because he doesn’t own very much. There’s a pile of jackets by the side of his dresser and his trash can is overflowing with junk food packets, but most of the floor is taken up with an enormous futon, easily big enough for three grown men. Or one grown man and one enormous ninja dog. Hinata misses when Akamaru was small enough to be tucked into Kiba’s hood, because it was the cutest thing she’s ever seen.

She sets her pack down in an unused corner, and Shino puts his next to it. Akamaru, who flopped down on the bed, heaves a sigh and gets up as they open the door to leave again. Hana is doing some kind of paperwork at the kitchen table, and Kiba ignores her as he goes to start looking through the cupboards. “You in the mood for rice or noodles?”

“I have no preference,” say Hinata and Shino at the same time. Hinata blushes, and Shino retreats slightly into the collar of his jacket, but Kiba laughs.

“Okay, then we’re having rice and grilled beef, ‘cos it’s easy to make.”

“Don’t forget the vegetables,” says Hana without looking up. “You’ll get scurvy.”

“I know what scurvy is,” says Kiba witheringly. “And it’s not that.”

The three of them start inventing a sauce to marinate the beef in, and Kiba puts a grill over two of the burners on the stove. Shino turns out to have an excellent intuition for flavor combinations, which Hinata tells him with a smile.

“Why?” he mumbles. “Because the Aburame clan emphasizes excellence in both battlefield and domestic skills.”

Inuzuka Tsume comes home loudly, with her ninja dog, Kuromaru, by her side. “Oh look, Kiba does care. Something smells good, boy.” She walks over to peer at the grill and put her son in a headlock before thoroughly ruffling his hair. “Don’t overcook that, now.” Kuromaru greets Akamaru and Hana’s three dogs before coming to sniff Hinata and Shino.

“Nice to meet you, Kuromaru-san,” whispers Hinata, offering him her hand. He gives her an amused look and gently closes his teeth around her fingers, not hard enough to hurt. Shino eyes him and makes a shallow bow, but doesn’t offer his hand.

The Inuzuka chatter while they’re eating, about clan gossip and jounin gossip and clinic gossip. Hinata and Shino stay quiet for the most part, but Hinata at least enjoys how animated the family is. Even after knowing him for three years, it’s still hard to tell what Shino thinks about anything, but she thinks he’s happy to be included. Tsume asks all three of them how their training is going, which is very kind of her.

After they wash up, they go back to Kiba’s room. He shuts the door and leans against it, grinning. “Now the _real_ fun starts. I’ve been saving up for candy and shitty drinks! C’mon, c’mon, sit on the bed. D’you know any ghost stories?”

“I know a few,” says Hinata. She has heard from the other girls in her class at the academy, just as Kiba probably has, what to expect at a sleepover. “Turn off the lights, please, Kiba-kun. This should be more effective in the dark.”

“Holy shit, why did I not know your eyes glow? That’s already creepy.”

“S-sorry… I can close them…”

“No, no, it’s fine, just tell the story. It adds to the atmosphere.”

“This story is true,” she begins. “It’s about the time when my uncle and my father met a ghost in the woods one night. They had snuck away from the Tanabata festival, so no-one else was around. They, um, were laughing and having fun, I assume, and didn’t care that they were far away from the village until they realized they couldn’t see the fireworks any more.” She closes her eyes, smiling to herself for what she’s about to do. She can feel Shino’s chakra, and subtly turns so she’ll be face to face with him. “They were lost, and they couldn’t sense anyone else, so they started yelling for help. And then they heard a noise. They turned around to look and the ghost spoke to them.” She opens her eyes suddenly, dimly seeing them reflected in Shino’s glasses, and he yelps. “What are you doing in the woods?” she asks, in her most ghostly voice. “You should be with the rest of your kind.”

Shino pushes up his glasses nervously. “And then what happened?”

Hinata smiles. “Then, my great-grandfather stepped out of the bushes and scolded them for wandering away from the village, and it was even scarier than when they thought he was a ghost.”

“Seriously?” asks Kiba in a strangled voice. He turns on the light, and she can see he’s holding in laughter. “That was so good until the end! I never knew you could do creepy!”

“Ah, so you liked it?” She just told it exactly as it was told to her.

“It was very effective as a ghost story,” Shino says. “I would like to try telling one. But you can leave the lights on. Why? Because my glasses are tinted and it already looks very dim in here.” Hinata covers her mouth, and Kiba laughs out loud. Shino shifts and pushes up his glasses again. “This story is not true, unlike Hinata’s story. But it certainly could have happened, if ghosts were real.”

“You’re supposed to pretend it’s real until the end,” Kiba complains. “Show some deceit, you’re a shinobi, aren’t you?”

“I feel that one should never lie to one’s teammates. If I may begin?” Kiba shrugs and lies back on the bed. “There was a merchant travelling through the mountains. I believe it was late autumn, so it is unsurprising that he was caught in a snow storm and had to hide in a cave. He heard a wailing sound, and at first he thought it was the wind, but when the wind died down it continued. He walked deeper into the cave until he found a woman crying loudly. He asked, ‘Why are you crying?’ She looked up, and he saw that she had no eyes. ‘I’m crying because I lost my eyes,’ she said. ‘I will have to take yours instead.’”

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Hinata asks uncertainly, “Is that… the end?”

“I could describe the ghost pulling out his eyes if you want me to, but I have heard that ghost stories are more effective when information is withheld.”

“Shino,” says Kiba, “that was ultra lame. You don’t get suspense at all. You have to build up tension so it’s really scary when you find out she has no eyes. Basically, the more words the story has, the better it is.”

“Wi-within reason,” adds Hinata.

“Hey, hey, have some candy! I think if you eat enough of it you get really weird and I want to see you guys weird. It’ll be really funny.”

“That isn’t a very good way to get either of us to do something,” says Shino. “Why? Because—”

“Because you’re both boring and no fun. Come on, who doesn’t love candy?”

To appease him, Hinata takes a candy from the pile on his bed and eats it. “It’s very good, Kiba-kun, thank you.”

Kiba puts two in his mouth, pointedly looking at Shino, who sighs and takes one as well.

“Are you going to tell a story?” asks Shino. “You seem to be an expert in suspense.”

Kiba grins. “I’m going to tell you a story that’s been passed down in my family for generations. It’s called a shaggy dog story.” Hinata isn’t surprised that that kind of story is an Inuzuka tradition. None of their dogs are particularly shaggy, though. Perhaps it’s a traditional myth form? “Okay, so this starts with my great great grandmother. Her ninja dog companion was _the_ shaggiest. I’m serious. The shaggiest dog you ever saw. He looked like a mop. His name was Kemaru. But one time when she took him into battle she lost him somehow. She didn’t know, her clan didn’t know, she couldn’t even find his scent. She was sure he must have been kidnapped by enemy shinobi. So she got permission from the First to go look for him. The first place she looked was Lightning Country, but of course she had to disguise herself…”

It’s an epic saga of one woman’s search for her dog, and Kiba is a surprisingly good storyteller. Every time she finds herself in a new place, Hinata and Shino tense, hoping that finally someone will have seen her Kemaru, but every time someone shows her a shaggy dog it turns out that Kemaru is _much_ shaggier than that one. After years of searching she returns to Konoha, a broken woman, and Hinata is on the edge of tears.

“Don’t tell me she died of heartbreak, Kiba-kun,” she whispers.

“Oh, no, she didn’t. She got home to her family and knelt before her mom and said, ‘Mother, I’m so sorry, I’ve betrayed the ideals of the clan. I can’t find Kemaru anywhere.’ And then the mop in the corner jumps up and starts barking at her like _Where the hell were you for five years?_ ”

Hinata and Shino stare at him, disbelieving. After a moment Shino says, “Why didn’t anyone notice? Aren’t the Inuzuka famous for their sense of smell?”

Kiba starts laughing. “The looks on your faces! It’s not supposed to make sense, it’s supposed to be a huge letdown.”

“It was,” says Shino. He takes another piece of candy to add to the small pile of wrappers growing in front of him. “Ending a story with a non sequitur seems like poor practice.”

“Shut up, Shino. My story was awesome and you were in suspense the whole time. QED I win at storytelling.”

“Perhaps I will ask Ino-san for advice,” Hinata says. “Her storytelling is very engaging, and I think she understands punchlines better than Kiba-kun.”

“I understand punchlines just fine! The point of the story was that the punchline was dumb!”

“Ever since I learned Akamaru’s name,” says Shino, “I have been convinced that the Inuzuka clan is very bad at these sorts of things.”

“What the fuck, man?” says Kiba. “Akamaru is a perfectly fine name for him! He turns red when I give him soldier pills!” Akamaru barks softly and lays his head on Kiba’s knee.

“Did you know that when he was a puppy?” asks Hinata, smiling at him.

“You’re both the worst,” says Kiba. “I should have been on a team with… with. Shit, everyone else is even worse.”

“You could have been on a frontline team with Chouji-san and Sakura-chan,” suggests Hinata.

“A taijutsu team with Lee-san and Neji-san,” says Shino. Hinata stops herself from frowning with some difficulty. The implication is that her taijutsu is inferior—which it is, she’s more a sensor than a fighter, but it still hurts.

“Hey, Shino, you could’ve been on the genius team with Shikamaru and Sakura-chan. Or the weirdo team with Lee and Ino.”

“What’s weird about Ino?” asks Hinata.

Kiba grimaces. “You know. Her whole…” He gestures vaguely at his head.

“She’s rather controlling and competitive,” says Shino.

“Mm, yeah, that’s what I meant.” It is probably not what Kiba meant, but Hinata decides to give him the benefit of the doubt. “What would Hinata’s team have been?”

“Perhaps a doujutsu team with Neji-san and Sasuke,” says Shino. They all take a moment to contemplate what that team would be like. Shino concludes, “It would never work.”

“Maybe an optimist team! It could be her and Naruto and Lee.” It would be a perfect match, thinks Hinata; they’re all what Gai-sensei calls ‘geniuses of hard work’—not endowed with any natural skill or good fortune, forced to be optimists or give up on being shinobi forever. Hinata has wished since she was on a team with Naruto for seven years now, and she can’t help but think of his radiant smile. Her face slowly heats up.

“A team with Naruto-kun…” she whispers.

“I would not object to being on such a team,” says Shino, pushing up his glasses. “Although it must have been very hard on Sakura-san for her only teammate to be gone for two years.”

“What an asshole, right?” Kiba lays back onto Akamaru’s side and eats another piece of candy. “Couldn’t believe it when he came back _hot_.”

Hinata blushes even more deeply as she and Shino turn to look at Kiba. He’s not _wrong_ , but to say it so plainly…

Kiba realizes what he said and nearly chokes on his candy. “N-not that I think Naruto’s hot! It was more of an objective assessment. Like, Hinata would know, right?”

“Um!” Hinata squeaks. “I, um, I th-think…”

“Objectively he is quite attractive,” says Shino, and she gives him a grateful smile for saving her. But Kiba points a dramatic finger at him and says, “Aha!”

“Aha?” echoes Shino.

“You think he’s hot too!”

“In that case the same must be true of you.” Shino pushes up his glasses, and Hinata could swear he’s blushing behind the collar of his jacket. “Why? Because my assessment was just as objective as yours was, if not more so.”

Kiba makes a strangled noise and rolls over to bury his face in Akamaru’s fur. Akamaru whines comfortingly and licks his ear. “Fuck,” he says in a muffled voice. “I kind of have a crush on him.”

For some reason, this makes Shino go bright red.

“He’s just so… y’know?”

“Radiant,” says Hinata, at the same time as Shino says “Beautiful,” and Kiba says “ _Fuck_.”

All three of them hide their faces. “He’s never looked twice at me,” says Hinata from inside of a pillow. The only time he noticed her was when she was halfway unconscious during her fight with her cousin.

“He didn’t even recognize me,” mutters Shino.

“He thinks I’m dumb and annoying,” sighs Kiba. “At least no-one has to be jealous ‘cos none of us have a chance with him.”

“That’s not very optimistic, Kiba,” says Shino. “One should never give up on one’s dreams.”

Hinata giggles. “In order to attract Naruto, one must think like Naruto.”

“A surprisingly elusive specimen,” says Shino. She can hear the smile in his voice.

“Sometimes he can be lured with ramen…” She grins at him.

“But only if you have a lot of money!” finishes Kiba.

“His natural habitat, as we know, is anywhere dangerous,” says Shino.

“Anywhere he can show off, you mean?”

“Kiba-kun!” Hinata scolds. They both look at her. “Well, it’s true, but you don’t have to put it that way.” Kiba snorts, and Hinata hides her silent laughter behind her hand.

It’s better, she thinks, to make fun of Naruto for his best qualities than to regret that they can never have him. It turns into a challenge: who knows the most ridiculous story about him? And then: who can pass off a fake story as true? And then it’s just stories about Konoha. They go to sleep very late, all flushed and smiling and a little sick from too much sugar.

Hinata doesn’t entirely regret it, even when Kurenai-sensei appears on the windowsill at five the next morning.


End file.
